Google Photos is handy. After all, it offers free, unlimited backup storage for your photos. Don’t feel like creating collages? Google Photos handles that too as well as slide-shows and movies from your uploaded library.

There’s just one problem. What if you want to uninstall Google Photos? Any new photos won’t be uploaded to your account, right? That’s not the case.

Nashville Business Journal’s David Arnott noticed hundreds of photos he thought he had deleted still sitting in his Google Photos account. These photos were taken weeks after he uninstalled the backup app.

What’s going on? The upload settings aren’t within the Google Photos app. It defers to the Google Settings app. If you decide Google Photos isn’t for you and delete the app, the settings are still inside the Google Settings app.

Ok, how do I fix it?

Head over to the Google Settings menu, tap ‘Google Photos Backup’ and turn it off. You should be good to go.

Welcome to the Cloud

This is what happens when we embrace the cloud. It’s great for storing information such as photos, but it can be a bit deceiving when you want to delete an app that uses it – which is the case with Google Photos.

We all look at apps as operating independently. When you delete it, it’s gone. But, with something like Google Photos, it’s designed to work across a variety of devices, in the background and within Google’s entire ecosystem.

Apps are designed to be incredibly easy to use. But, sometimes they take a bit more effort to get rid of than you think.